ArtFab: Fabiola Beracasa Talks with Robert Lazzarini

ArtFab: Fabiola Beracasa Talks with Robert Lazzarini

Gallery co-owner and creative director, Fabiola Beracasa bridges the worlds of art and fashion. Always chic, always fun, and more knowledgeable about art than, well, most of us, she’s brought her own unique eye to the gallery, The Hole.

Beracasa has also taken on the burning questions we have about the art world—mainly, who do we need to know now? Read her regular interviews featuring the best new artists, curators, authors, and more.

Here, she interviews Robert Lazzarini, who she calls "a very cool artist." Find out why.

ELLE: In your most recent show, (damage), at Marlborough Chelsea in New York, was there a clear narrative between the works?

Robert Lazzarini: So, all of the objects in (damage) relate to a kind of broken landscape, each suggesting a different kind of site — the highway, industrial park, suburbia, etc. And of course within that, something has happened to these objects – a broken-in window, a blown safe, shot-up street signs. However, by eliminating details of a specific event, I was attempting to emphasize the site as a kind of archetype. So these objects are definitely shaped by events, but events that are indeterminate.

ELLE: The first object you distorted was a Stradivarius violin, which differs from the body of work you’re most known for i.e. guns, knives, skulls, chain-link fence, brass knuckles, etc. Did something in particular shift your interest?

RL: Well, violin was my first compound mathematical distortion. That object was the culmination of a lot of things I was working on up to that point. One of the things that interested me most about that violin was the fact that it had moved from this functional object to a static one. It had become a kind of three-dimensional image. The way that I approach subjects now is a bit different. For example, guns, knives, and brass knuckles are these violent tools, but all related to the grasp – so in addition to having a physical experience of the work, it was a way to position the subject in relation to the body.